Day 47 - I Choose to Live

It is fascinating what a difference it makes when you decide to do something. If you decide that you do not want to do something then you have to first clear that decision before you are able to actually start doing it. It also has an effect when it is something that you do not want to do, if you have to do something that you really do not want to do you cause that project to be one that you can only do when you force yourself to do it and if you force yourself to do something you will be angry while doing it and you will take out your anger on the people around you.

I have also seen how you can tire yourself out and make things worse than they actually are just by deciding that you are unwilling to do it, then you will be dreading the task and thinking about how difficult it is going to be and by doing these things you will actually make it more difficult and make yourself angry and irritated.

This is a quote from Osho:

'To be ordinary is the only extraordinary thing. Very rarely somebody relaxes and becomes ordinary. If you ask Zen masters, 'What do you do?' they will say, 'We fetch wood from the forest, we carry water from the well. We eat when we feel hungry, we drink when we feel thirsty, we go to sleep when we feel tired. This is all.'

It does not look very appealing -- fetching wood, carrying water, sitting, eating. You will say, 'These are ordinary things. Everybody is doing them.'

These are not ordinary things, and nobody is doing them. When you are fetching wood, you are condemning it -- you would like to be the president of some country. You don't want to be a woodcutter. You keep condemning the present for some imaginary future.

Carrying water from the well, you feel you are wasting your life. You are angry. You were not made for such ordinary things. You had come with a great destiny -- to lead the whole world towards a paradise, some utopia.

These are all ego-trips. These are all in states of consciousness.

Just to be ordinary... and then suddenly what you call trivia is no more trivia, what you call profane is no more profane. Everything becomes sacred. Carrying wood becomes sacred. Fetching water from the well becomes sacred.'

It is fascinating that this is what we do within ourselves whenever there we are doing something, it is never the simplicity and acceptance of “doing the ordinary and menial task”, it has become the total ego trip of ourselves to condemn and think we are better than these things. I need to go fix a fence and all the while I am thinking that I could be doing some grand and important thing trying to make myself feel better about doing this simple, practical common sense task and within trying to make myself fell important I actually make myself angry at the fact that I am not important or special.
None of us are special or important, this is the point we all have to realise.

We are all the same, we all have to eat, sleep, drink and defecate. This one simple point of accepting the fact that we are the same and all have the same problems would make the world a better place for all of us to live in. For if you saw your neighbour as the same as you and treated them as you would want to be treated wouldn’t the world be calmer, safer and give us all a chance to really work to change ourselves and our world into a world and life that we would all enjoy?

I am willing and able to do this and I have chosen to do this, I want my future children to grow up without worrying about being killed when they are sleeping and to be able to enjoy themselves without having to block out the suffering of the people around us as we all had to.